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Today there is more content on YouTube than ever, with more than 500 hours of video uploaded every minute to the platform worldwide. As a result, it can be very hard to stand out on the platform these days because with more uploads comes more competition for viewers and noise. Having a YouTube channel, you need to find ways to cut through the hurdles to get noticed. Becoming successful on YouTube is all about understanding as well as maximizing things that can boost both passive and active viewing. As a platform, YouTube is a video search engine with more and more people searching out video content from their favorite YouTubers. Standing out on YouTube is not that complicated, just create engaging videos with great sound quality and use thumbnails to get them to click. In this article, we are going to share with you things you can do to stand out on YouTube. 1. Thumbnails You have probably heard the adage that you should never judge a book by its cover. However, despite that, book publishers still go to the efforts of making the covers look great and exciting. The same can be said of video thumbnails. A great thumbnail can make a huge difference when it comes to attracting viewers to your videos, but choosing the right thumbnail can go a long way in making you stand out on YouTube. With many tools currently available to creators, it is super-easy to give your video and channel a professional look. A good custom video thumbnail makes a visitor want to watch your video, however, there are still people who don't want to put an effort in giving their videos a professional look, and instead, simply use a random still image from the video. By default, YouTube or any other video hosting platform will pick a random still image from your videos and use it as a thumbnail, and therefore you do not need to choose and upload it for your videos. But the problem with this is that these automatically selected still shots are usually unflattering to the eyes. For instance, if you are speaking in the video, it is highly likely that the platform will pick a still image with awkward or weird facial expressions with nothing to tell visitors what the video is about or why a visitor would want to view it. Still, images from a video as a thumbnail is not professional look and is not appealing to viewers either. So if you can’t be troubled to show that you care about how your video looks, why would a visitor bother to view it? Rather than leaving YouTube to pick a still image from your video as a thumbnail, you can choose one from the many options the platform offers. But if you want something a little bit more professional, consider creating a custom thumbnail for better results. Just look at your competitions’ videos and create better thumbnails than them to stand out. 2. Good Camera You definitely need a good camera. Whether you have been creating video content for one decade or one week, a good camera can make or break your channel. There are plenty of great cameras for YouTube on the market, but the best camera is one which you can afford or the one you have at your disposal. You will struggle to build your audience if you are not making videos because you are waiting for the perfect camera. Making video content is an art sometimes, and thus it depends on your skills and less on the equipment you have. YouTube success depends largely on your creative capabilities and therefore, choosing a camera can be quite subjective, and with the right kind of gear, you could capture just about any video content with whatever camera you can get. While you can shoot a video with just any camera, high-quality gear means high-quality production quality, which translates to more views. And that is why we recommend Canon EOS 80D for DSLR and Canon VIXIA HF R80 for low budget. 3. Post Consistently Why should you care about consistency? It provides your audience, subscribers, and viewers a reason to be enthusiastic about your next video. You will come across plenty of tips and advice telling you how consistency is important and what you can do it becomes consistent. But these tips sometimes are not helpful. For instance, some of the people giving these tips tend to mistake consistency for just uploading new videos regularly. Although regularity is a part of consistency, it is not the entirety. Consistency involves how you create your videos, brand as well as all other components of your videos put together. It involves when, where, what, how, and why. If you upload content every day at a certain time, your audience will know when your next video will drop. Being consistent does not mean your audience will always know how your videos appear or play out, but it means they will have expectations, which will increase your traction. 4. Be Fun and Entertaining Here is the thing, if you don’t know who your audience is, your videos will likely fall flat. You need to have certain communication skills in order to properly communicate with your listeners and then choose the approach you use in order to infuse fun and entertaining elements into your videos. R5egardless of the niche and topic of your discussion, the most important thing is to have fun with it and ensure you transmit your charisma to the audience otherwise being boring sucks and can cost you viewership. Once you have fun, it is essential to understand exactly what your audience wants and instead of going for quantity, you should go for quality videos. Just be yourself and allow your personality to shine. The thing is, fun videos tend to have billions of views are ideal for piquing interests as well as gathering people around. No single soul will hate fun and entertaining video. 5. YouTube SEO If a video content has high engagement metrics, it will rank higher on YouTube compared to videos with lower metrics. YouTube is known for being the second-largest search engine after Google, with more than 2 billion users and around 90% of people searching and discovering new products or brands within the platform. Every success story on YouTube begins with engaging content, and by using YouTube SEO techniques, your channel can reach a wider audience and boost engagement. YouTube SEO involves a lot of things, including titles, descriptions, and keywords, which can all be done in the creator studio. SEO in YouTube begins with great titles and descriptions. Regardless of the content of the video, if the title is not headline-grabbing enough, it will not get as many views as you hope. YouTube videos tend to work just like blog posts, if the title is not catchy, it will not likely get many clicks. Titles are basically the names of your videos and without them, you will probably not be able to upload anything on the platform. They vary in length and are essential when looking at it from an SEO perspective. In fact, it is probably the most essential piece of content, perhaps even more than videos, you can create. It is also the most challenging content you can create. How to do YouTube titles: Keep the length within 60 to 70 charactersUse exact keywordsStart the title with a keywordUse numbersAvoid clickbait In addition to titles, you also need to get the descriptions right. A video title seems an obvious thing, but why would is description very important? Descriptions are used to provide a preview of the video to help the audience decide to watch the video or not. There are two main types of YouTube descriptions – channel descriptions and video descriptions. Channel description describes your channel and is what you write on the “About” page; while a video description is the text just below each video and helps explain what the video entails so users can make a decision whether or not to watch it. Just as with the titles, use keywords and repeat them in the description. Use keywords at least three times in the description so your video can rank higher. All this can be done in YouTube's Creator Studio. This platform brings together all the necessary tools for effective content creation. To access YouTube Studio, simply select your Profile in the top-right corner of your YouTube page and select YouTube Studio. 6. Engage Subscribers One of the most effective ways of building an audience is engaging with them. Virtually anyone who creates a channel would kill to have a loyal fan and to get one, you need to engage with them. While you are building your audience, make sure you also do engagement along the way to ensure the size of the audience does not reduce and instead increases. Be that intimate friend they never know they needed and post your content consistently. As you create your videos, always keep in mind that you are talking to people, just like in real life although may not directly talk to you. 7. Channel Niche Do not just talk about a bunch of random things, build a niche YouTube channel. You need to first understand your audience because when you do it right. The niche you choose for your channel will be the foundation of your YouTube business, so this is quite an important factor to seriously consider when starting a YouTube channel. If you want to feed the right kind of content to your audience, you must first and foremost know who the audience is. You can’t simply upload some random videos hoping people will come to watch. Every video must have an intent or purpose. When choosing a channel niche, always begin from a place of passion because you will have to create content regularly for a long time about the topic, which can get boring if you are not fascinated by it. 8. Be the Expert Show you are an authority in the niche you have created a channel around. And for you to become an expert, you need to possess an in-depth understanding of the topic or niche you chose. Additionally, being an expert also means knowing how to use appropriate video formats as well as how to create a schedule for posting content to help build your audience. Also, being an expert include creating jaw-dropping video content, which means you need to understand how to choose the right style for your video, intro and outro panels, the right music, and add extra effects. 9. Viral Videos Look at your competition and see how they get so many views and try to outdo what they have done or done better. If they are ranked and getting views there is a reason and it is up to you to find this reason. Embed playlists and post them in your own channel or have your audience share them to increase your views for every single playlist. In order to create a viral video, you need to elicit emotions, but in this case only positive emotions. You don’t want your video going viral by gaining loads of backlash. 10. Brand Become a brand and look professional on and off the camera. People discover brands and new products on YouTube and no wonder both small and big brands are creating content on YouTube in order to gain new customers and subscribers. Even if you are building a name for yourself, you still need a strong brand that people trust in order to build an audience. 11. Promote YouTube Channel Another way of standing out on YouTube is by promoting your channel on your website and social media. It is pretty easy to promote your channel on social media because all you need to do is announce a new video on your Facebook page. Then you will want to give out a link leading back to your channel. You can also embed your newest videos on your Facebook page so that viewers can watch them without leaving Facebook. If you have a website, you can also embed videos on the site to let visitors watch it without having to go to YouTube. Hope you like the YouTube tips.